Remember Me
by Rahmi
Summary: Dean says jump and Sam doesn't ask how high.


_Written for the ghosts and hauntings square of H/C bingo. S6 spoilers, specifically, what's wrong with Sam. Swearing and vague creepiness from Sam's direction._

* * *

Dean says jump and Sam doesn't ask how high. Sam jumps and then slides Dean a look through his hair to see if it was high enough, and he keeps freakin' jumping until Dean tells him to stop. It's weird and kind of awesome, but it's not Dean's brother.

It's not his brother.

"Speak," Dean says when he walks into the motel room.

Sam looks up at him, eyes squinted just this side of wrong. "What do you want me to say?" he asks, but there's no real puzzlement in his tone. He's just... asking. What does Dean want to hear, right now? What does he _not_ want Sam to say?

"Nothing, man," Dean says, "Nothing. Just shut up."

"I wasn't saying anything," Sam points out. He goes back to cleaning the guns on the table though, like Dean's not worth his time. Like it's totally normal for Dean to say shit like that. Like Sam doesn't care at all about what prompted it.

Sam doesn't care. The sooner Dean gets that through his thick skull the sooner he'd be able to stop doing this to himself.

"And you were doing a bang-up job," Dean says, "So go back to doing it."

His brother's corpse gives him a confused look that is, look at that, just to the left of completely wrong and fucking creepy. Sometimes, he misses the soulless Sam who pretended to be his brother. Any emotions this one tries to fake are so downright creepy they make all of Dean's hair stand on end.

Don't even get him started on the creepfest that was Sam patting him on the back, the leg, the arm. If Sam's "emotions" made all of his hair stand on end, than Sam _touching_ him was enough to make him break out in hives.

He watches Sam as he putters around the room, putting his keys away and toeing out of his boots.

Sam's got every gun in their collection strewn across the ratty ass table in one corner of the room. His hands are just as rocky steady on the gun as they've always been.

He cleans with a single-minded focus that reminds Dean of those days when everything would go so bad that Sam turned inwards and did the same thing over and over and over and over again. It's been a while since his Sam did that (a year, at least, a snide part of Dean's mind that _hates him_points out), but that seems to be this one's default mode.

It's not creepy in the same way as everything else this Sam does is because Dean's seen it before, catalogued it, and accepted it as Sam. He used to carry around dulled knives just so he could dump them in front of Sam when he got like this.

So it's not the actions. It's the fact that this Sam is doing them without ever snapping out of it. It's almost familiar enough that Dean can let it lull him into thinking Sam is here.

Dean misses his brother so much that it aches.

"You're staring at me," Sam says without looking up from his gun.

"I figure it's only fair." Dean throws himself on his bed and rolls so he can tuck an elbow behind his head. "It's not like you aren't being a total mouth-breather over me at night."

Sam shrugs. "I can see when you start dreaming," he says flatly, like he hadn't just made himself even _creepier_ than he already is. "It's interesting. I didn't realize it about you before."

"I didn't realize you were this freakin' creepy before," Dean says.

The body pauses again. "I don't think I was," he says thoughtfully. "I watched you sleep a few times after you came back from Hell, but I think that was more to make sure you were real than because you were interesting. I don't remember why that was important."

And then there's that weird confessions of a soulless drama queen thing this Sam seems to have going on. Dean eyes him. "What've I told you about things like that?" he asks.

"Keep them to myself," Sam says promptly. His eyebrows draw together, but that wrinkle between them doesn't look quite right. It's like looking at a vardøgr only Sam never steps into the room after this thing does. "I don't see how it's an invasion of privacy, Dean. I am him. He's me."

"And the fact that you're talking about him in the third-person...?" asks Dean.

Sam gives him a quirk of the lips that could, if Dean was cracked, be considered a smile. "It's easier for you," he says. "Contrary to what you seem to think, Dean, I'm not actually trying to make your life harder."

"I get it, dude, I do," he says. The hell of it is that Dean really does get it. Sam'd have to care to want to make Dean's life harder. "Just shut the hell up, alright?"

"You keep telling me that," Sam says, "And then you talk to me. What am I supposed to do, ignore you?" He sounds genuinely curious. Tell me what to do, Dean, because I don't understand.

You don't understand because you don't have a freakin' _soul_, Dean thinks about shouting. He doesn't, but only because he can't stand that vaguely blank look Sam gets on his face. Dean can't shake the feeling that his face is only blank because he's shuffling through memories trying to figure out what facial expression to use.

Like he said, creepy.

Dean takes a moment to rub at his eyes and rolls onto his back so he can't see the thing that isn't his brother. "You know what?" he says, "Sure. Just keep your mouth shut for the rest of the night, got it?"

Blessed silence from the table. Thank God. Castiel. Whatever vaguely angelic being looks out for Winchester boys, anyway.

Jump, Dean thinks wryly. His eyes sting, freakin' dust in the room, that's all, so he rubs them again.

"Hand me the whiskey," Dean says. The good thing about this Sam is that he never looks at Dean with puppy eyes when Dean drinks himself into a stupor. It's just about the only plus Dean can find, so he clings to it religiously.

Sam doesn't say anything, but the way he pointedly hefts the bottle up and gives it a jiggle says more than enough. There isn't even a mouthful of alcohol left in the bottle and it's almost brand spankin' new; Dean wonders if he really drank that much of it last night.

It's amazing his liver hasn't given up the ghost yet.

"Awesome," Dean says. The flask in his pocket is empty too. Fuck.

He weighs the pros and cons of going out for some more mentally while he watches Sam methodically pull another gun apart. Cons: having to put his boots back on, having to get up, having to spend money he's not sure they have. Pros: being able to drink himself into a coma and not having to deal with trying to fall asleep with mouth-breathing over there staring at him.

Yeah, no contest.

"Come on," Dean says, heaving himself to his feet. His boots are where he left them, so he shoves his feet in without bothering to do up the laces.

He doesn't have to look behind him to know that Sam's just set the gun on the table and pushed himself to his feet. Dean also knows that the rustling behind him is Sam jamming a gun into the waistband of his jeans. "Okay," Sam says.

Dean points at Sam without looking. "Thought I told you to shut up?" he asks.

This time there's quiet. Expectant quiet, filled with about seven gazillion feet of obedient, soulless little brother. The skin between Dean's shoulder blades itch; he catches himself waiting for some kind of smart-ass comment, for Sam to start muttering under his breath about short, bossy brothers who think they know best.

There's nothing, of course. Sam silently stands his regulation foot and a half behind Dean and waits.

Dean rubs a hand down his face. "We're going for a drink," he says, even though Sam won't ask. He sets off into the parking lot. Sam follows dutifully at his heels, like that little brother he thought he missed so much, the one with the gap-toothed smile and the big heart.

Dean wishes he had his actual little brother back: demon blood addiction, broken heart, and all.


End file.
